What's suspicious about drinking 'chai', HC asks police

Can you drink tea suspiciously? The Kolhapur Police think so. Luckily for the Vijay Patil, arrested for suspicious behaviour while drinking tea at a stall earlier this year, the Bombay High Court was on its side.

A division bench comprising justices SC Dharmadhikari and GS Patel observed that “while cutting chai is permissible, even fashionable, cutting corners with the law is not.” In an interesting order, the court also asked the police whether anyone owed it an explanation for having chai at a tea-stall.

The court pulled up the Kolhapur police for not thinking clearly before detaining the petitioner under section 151 of the CrPC which allows them to detain any person without a warrant if they suspect mischief.

Patil, a resident of Karveer, Kolhapur, was drinking tea at around 11 am near the varsity in Kolhapur city on February 22. VT Jadhav, police sub-inspector of Rampuri police station was on patrol duty and on spotting Jadhav, asked him what he was doing at the tea stall at that time. Patil replied stating the obvious, that he was having tea. The police found his answer suspicious and arrested him. Patil was then taken to special executive magistrate at Karveer and a good behaviour bond worth Rs4,000 was taken from him.

Patil’s lawyer, advocate Satyavrat Joshi, filed a writ petition stating that his client’s fundamental rights were violated. The prosecution in its reply claimed that the arrest was justified since Patil had a number of criminal cases registered against him, under the Anti-Gambling Act and the Arms Act. He was detained so that he did not commit any more offences. To this advocate Joshi stated, “No doubt there were several cases registered against him, but in a substantial number of cases the court had acquitted him, while remaining cases were in mid trial stage. On the day he was detained by the police, the police had no reason and there was no case registered against him. It was a pure violation of fundamental rights of a person.’’

The court after hearing the arguments of both the parties held, “We are unaware that the law required anyone to give an explanation for having tea, whether in the morning, noon or night. One might take tea in variety of ways, not all of them are always elegant or delicate, some of them are perhaps noisy. But we know of no way to drink tea ‘suspiciously’. The ingestion of a cup that cheers demand needs no explanation.”

The order further maintained that there was a violation of the fundamental rights of the person. “Beyond saying that the Petitioner had no explanation for being at the tea stall, we find nothing in the affidavit filed by the police. This, in our view, is insufficient compliance with the mandate of section 151 CrPC. The petitioner’s past history of criminal cases is equally irrelevant, since it cannot possibly lead to any conclusion of criminal activity.”